How To Automatically Sort App Icons On The iOS Home Screen

Most iPhone users aren’t likely to be aware of the pain that is having to reorganizing your entire Home screen on iOS, as there’s really no need for the chore on a fresh iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, and freshly restored devices are catered for by iCloud or iTunes backups, which also save your Home screen layout.

Some users, however, like to try out several apps a day, constantly rearranging their Home screen and never settling for one layout. If this applies to you or, for whatever reason, you find yourself yearning for an easier way to sort app icons, the jailbreak tweak AppSort by Brogan Miner is a simple, two-step solution worth considering.

Available for free on one of Cydia’s default repositories and compatible with iOS 9, AppSort lets you sort all app icons on your Home screen a number of ways with a gesture of your choice and a tap. It works in conjunction with the popular automation tweak Activator to offer an extensive list gestures for quick activation right from the Home screen. If you don’t already have Activator installed, it is likely to be automatically downloaded along with the tweak.

You can map an activation gesture to AppSort from within Activator or the tweak’s own configuration menu within the Settings app. Once that is done, return to the Home screen and repeat whatever gesture you chose (we went with the Shake Device gesture) to invoke the tweak’s sorting menu. You can then choose whether you want to sort apps alphabetically, by usage, by the count displayed by notification badges or based on the color/hue of the icons. There is even an option to rearrange icons randomly, though we’re not sure when you’d find a use for that.

As mentioned earlier, the tweak is free and available over at the BigBoss repo.

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I'm an engineer, blogger, and graphic designer who loves creating and experimenting with different forms of online content when he's not looking for a mix of inspiration and escape in PC gaming, comic books and anime. You can find me on Twitter and Google+.